Tales from the Trail

Washington Extra – Waiting for Hugo

Mary Milliken

May 24, 2011 20:43 EDT

Grab a chair, some drinks and snacks and get ready for the show.

The United States slapped sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil giant PVDSA for trading with Iran, a move that could worsen Washington’s already sour relations with Caracas. Now we’re waiting for President Hugo Chavez to respond.

Expect a lot of noise, in typical Chavez fashion. In the warm-up act, one ally called the sanctions “ridiculous” and accused the United States of wanting to “once again…turn into the global policeman.”

Chavez himself might make some threats against his biggest foe, including an old one about cutting off oil supplies to the United States. He’s done it before — in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010, and maybe more times than we can count.

But it never comes to anything. The fact that 45 percent of Venezuela’s oil goes to the United States might explain why. With that kind of dependence, Venezuela is unlikely to stop the shipments, though there may be some tit-for-tat retaliation. The United States and Venezuela need each other, no matter what the Presidente says and no matter how long he talks.

Here are our top stories from Washington…

Maybe we should just call it “Katrina-slick-gate”

Patricia Zengerle

Apr 30, 2010 16:47 EDT

Is “Katrina” the “gate” of the 2000s?

The 1972 Watergate break-in spawned an army of “gates,” as the expression “whatever-gate” became shorthand for any political scandal. The subsequent decades saw “Travelgate,”  “Irangate,” “Nannygate, ”Whitewatergate” and a host of other major and minor political improprieties.

Almost 40 years later, “Katrina” has become popular political shorthand representing the slow response to a disaster, a nod toward the aftermath of  the devastating 2005 hurricane in New Orleans by then-President George W. Bush. The perception that the Republican president cared too little about the people of New Orleans to respond quickly to a hurricane that killed some 1,800 Americans was devastating to his public image, and hurt his party in the 2008 election that brought Democratic President Barack Obama to power.

Pundits have been waiting for ”Obama’s Katrina” almost since he took office in 2009.

This week, the White House is facing critics who say that a massive BP Plc oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico deserves the title. The White House dismissed the thought, and denied it was slow to respond to the spill, which took place after an explosion on a drilling platform that left 11 workers missing and presumed dead.

Earlier this year, there was speculation that Haiti’s devastating earthquake — which killed up to 300,000 people and destroyed much of the infrastructure in the hemisphere’s poorest country — would be his Katrina. In fact, Obama was praised for his quick and significant response.

Chavez’s space plans have Foggy Bottom in stitches

Anthony Boadle

Apr 2, 2010 21:31 EDT

Russian PM Vladimir Putin flew all the way to Venezuela for a quick 12-hour visit to boost oil and military ties with President Hugo Chavez, the loudest basher of U.S. “imperialism” in Washington’s backyard. 

Besides guns, tanks, jet fighters and missiles, Chavez wants a Russian hand in developing nuclear energy to cope with chronic electricity shortages in his oil-producing country, and technology to start a space industry.

“We are not going to build the atomic bomb, but we will develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” said the former paratrooper who has been in power for 11 years.

Chavez suggested Moscow might want to set up a satellite launch site in Venezuela, along with its “factory.”

The U.S. State Department scoffed at Chavez’s space plans. Spokesman P.J.Crowley pointed out that Venezuela was so short of electricity that the government had extended the Easter holiday for a full week as part of widespread efforts to save power, and could hardly contemplate “space travel.”

“Perhaps the focus should be more terrestrial than extraterrestrial,” Crowley said.

Do you think Chavez should be focusing on solving his country’s economic woes before looking towards the stars, or is a space program the way to go for his developing nation?

Palin’s Exxon Valdez account draws guffaws

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Sarah Palin’s new memoir, “Going Rogue,” already has been strongly criticized by John McCain’s aides for her account as a vice presidential candidate on the ticket with him in their unsuccessful 2008 race for the White House.

Now, add Alaskan experts who were involved in the case over the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster saying her account over her role in the litigation is distorted for a number of reasons.

In the book, Palin claims to have helped the fishermen, Alaska Natives and other individuals suing Exxon over spill damages prevail in their legal case.

“It took years for Alaska to achieve victory. As governor, I directed our attorney general to write an amicus brief in the case, and, thanks to Alaska’s able attorneys arguing in front of the highest court in the land, in 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the people,” she writes in her book. “Finally, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.”

But Palin’s claims of victory for the plaintiffs and of playing a role in achieving that victory are highly distorted, said the chief attorney for the approximately 32,000 plaintiffs that sued Exxon over damages from the worst oil-tanker spill in U.S. waters.

“That is the most cockamamie bullshit,” said Dave Oesting of Anchorage, lead plaintiff attorney in the private litigants’ civil case against Exxon and its successor, Exxon Mobil Corp. “She didn’t have a damn thing to do with it, and she didn’t know what it was about.”

While the Supreme Court in its June 25, 2008 decision did uphold the right of the plaintiffs to receive some punitive damages, it slashed the award dramatically. The Supreme Court ordered that punitive damages be no more than $507.5 million, down from the $2.5 billion ordered by a U.S. appeals court and the jury’s original verdict of $5 billion.

Is Chavez helping Iran build the bomb?

Anthony Boadle

Sep 14, 2009 12:54 EDT

Veteran Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau is on Hugo Chavez’s case.

Morgenthau warned last week at Washington’s Brookings Institution that Iran is using Venezuela’s financial system to avoid international sanctions so it can acquire materials to develop nuclear weapons and missiles.  He urged more scrutiny of the “emerging axis of Iran and Venezuela” in an op/ed article in the Wall Street Journal, in which he said a number of mysterious Iranian factories had sprung up in remote parts of Venezuela.

Chavez’s man in Washington, Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez, called the allegations “outrageous … unfounded and irresponsible” in a letter to the district attorney seen by Reuters.

True, leftist President Chavez has done little to endear himself to Americans. A fierce critic of the United States, his foreign policy rule of thumb is my enemy’s enemies are my friends. His last trip abroad included visits to Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iran, Belarus and Russia. He loudly announced plans to buy Russian tanks and anti-aircraft missiles.

But Chavez maintains the weapons are needed to defend Venezuela, which he says is threatened by a growing U.S. military presence in neighboring Colombia. And he swears he has no intention of developing an atomic bomb.

Besides vast oil reserves, Venezuela has large deposits of uranium, though there are no signs of any plans to mine them.

from Environment Forum:

Calling Dr. Strangelove!

Deborah Zabarenko

Aug 6, 2009 11:06 EDT

Perhaps you've heard about the Russian submarines patrolling international waters off the U.S. East Coast (if you haven't, take a look at a Reuters story about it) in what feels like an echo of the old Cold War. The Pentagon's not worried about this particular venture, but there are concerns from the U.S. energy industry about another Russian foray -- this one in concert with Cuba. In rhetoric that may ring a bell with anyone who saw the 1964 satirical nuclear-fear movie "Dr. Strangelove," the Washington-based Institute for Energy Research is sounding the alarm about a Russian-Cuban deal to drill for offshore oil near Florida.

"Russia, Communist Cuba Advance Offshore Energy Production Miles Off Florida's Coast," is the title on the institute's news release. Below that is the prescription for action: "Efforts Should Send Strong Message to Interior Dept. to Open OCS in Five-Year Plan." OCS stands for outer continental shelf, an area that was closed to oil drilling until the Bush administration opened it last year in a largely symbolic move aimed at driving down the sky-high gasoline prices of the Summer of 2008.

Environmentalists hate the idea. So does Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who has made opposition to offshore drilling one of his signature issues. But as it turns out, it's unlikely that anybody -- from Russia, Cuba, the United States or anywhere else -- is going to get petroleum out of the OCS in the immediate future.

For a start, it takes time to set up a deep-water offshore drilling rig. And any Cuban effort would be further hampered by the need to use equipment with less than 10 percent American technology, to comply with the long standing U.S. embargo against Cuba. As my Reuters colleague Russell Blinch reported in June, there may be scope for possible U.S.-Cuban cooperation here but no Cuban drilling platform is likely to be in the area this year.

Reports of a Russian-Cuban deal to explore for oil in the Gulf of Mexico prompted a quick response from the Institute for Energy Research, self-described as a free-market energy think-tank.

"This agreement between Russia and Cuba should serve as a wake-up call to Congress and this administration, especially (Interior) Secretary (Ken) Salazar, who is slow-walking a new offshore energy blueprint for the nation," the institute's president, Thomas Pyle, said in a statement. "If we are to remain competitive in the global market, our government must take its foot off the brake, and expand domestic energy production of all forms, onshore and off.”

What's your take? Should the United States drill baby drill off Florida's coast, reasoning that if U.S. companies don't, Russia and Cuba will? Keep a congressional ban in place? Or wait and see?

McCain: ending offshore drilling ban eased oil price

ASPEN, Colo. – Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain said on Thursday the recent sharp fall in the price of oil had been helped by the end of the U.S. federal offshore drilling moratorium.

“I think several factors have contributed to the recent drop in the price of a barrel of oil. I think the practice of conservation and the reduction in our demand has probably been a major factor,” he told the Aspen Institute.

“I also don’t think it was entirely accidental that the day that the president announced lifting the federal moratorium on offshore drilling, the price of a barrel of oil dropped.”

Despite the decline in oil prices from record highs above $140 a barrel in July to around $115, gasoline prices remain a crucial issue in the election campaign, pinching Americans as they cope with falling house prices.

McCain’s call for offshore drilling to boost domestic oil supplies, which he says will provide a bridge to a time when new, greener, energy technology is in place, has been slammed by critics who say it would be a disaster for the environment and not make any difference to oil prices.

The Arizona senator rejects this view, and on Thursday he reiterated his position that it could help straight away.

“I met with a group of independent petroleum producers in Bakersfield, California. They said, using existing facilities, you could have an immediate impact on our supply of oil. With exploration of known areas … within a year or two, they could increase our oil supply,” McCain said.